Mozambique: “Too early” for the displaced to return – AIM report

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Mozambique: “Too early” for the displaced to return – AIM report

8:30 CAT | 17 Mar 2022

FILE PHOTO - For illustration purposes only. [File photo: Ministério do Trabalho e Segurança Social]

A Mozambican government delegation, led by Labour Minister Margarida Talapa, has concluded that it is too early for people displaced by terrorist attacks in the northern province of Cabo Delgado to return to their home villages, according to a report in Wednesday’s issue of the independent newssheet “Carta de Moçambique”.

Talapa’s delegation visited the Cabo Delgado districts hit by terrorism last week to assess the conditions for the return of the population.

Among the reasons she invoked for not encouraging the displaced to return was the absence of state officials, including district administrators and permanent secretaries, in some of the districts affected. There was also a shortage of means of transport, and of work tools, while in some places the chaotic mess left behind by the terrorists had yet to be cleaned up.

Some Cabo Delgado public officials, she said, had not recovered from the traumatic experiences they had suffered. “We also recognise the urgent need to rehabilitate infrastructures, and to allocate equipment for work and transport, including ambulances”.

Speaking in the provincial capital, Pemba, at a meeting at the end of her delegation’s visit, Talapa also revealed that the plan to move displaced people currently living in the Afungi peninsula, in Palma district, back to their original homes in Mocimboa da Praia had so far come to nothing.

A sizeable number of Mocimboa villagers had taken refuge in the Quitunda resettlement town and Maganja village on the Afungi peninsula. On 4 March, the Mocimboa da Praia district government had stated confidently that the displaced in Afungi would be able to return, but Talapa said this had not happened for what she called “lack of conditions”.

She also said that security in this district has not yet been “consolidated”. Mocimboa da Praia town had been in terrorist hands for about a year before it was retaken by Mozambican and Rwandan forces in August 2021.

Meanwhile, in the neighbouring province of Niassa, unknown individuals injured three people in an armed attack against a passenger vehicle on Saturday, on the road that links the districts of Mecula and Marrupa.

The vehicle, carrying 17 passengers, was attacked by five hooded men, wearing the uniforms of forest rangers.

When the vehicle came under fire, the driver brought it to a standstill, and the bandits began beating up the passengers, stealing mobile phones, money and other possessions. Three of the passengers were seriously injured and taken to Marrupa district hospital.

The characteristics of the attack suggest that the assailants were not islamist terrorists, but highwaymen.

Source: AIM